A paragon of propriety among authors ... Jordan, alias Katie Price, at a book signing at Waterstones in Slough. Photograph: Geoffrey Swaine/Rex

An email arrives from the Society of Author's Children's Writers And Illustrators Group. Apparently, a well-established, enormous publishing house has decided to insert the following clause into its standard contract for children's books: "If you act or behave in a way which damages your reputation as a person suitable to work with or be associated with children, and consequently the market for or value of the work is seriously diminished, and we may (at our option) take any of the following actions: Delay publication / Renegotiate advance / Terminate the agreement."

The publisher's name? Ooh, that would be giving it away. Really? Oh go on then: Random House.

This is not to say anyone will stand for it - the SoA advises affected authors to ask for it to be removed - and that Random House will suddenly realise that it's not very good PR and cease this rot immediately. But even to have instigated such an outrageous demand is both paranoid and threatening.

It is also ill-founded. For some of the most popular (if not the most accomplished) children's authors may have only got a book contract because of their 'reputation', not in spite of it. Take Jordan, for instance, who writes some old tosh about ponies. She has waved her ample bosoms all over the place and expressed literary ambitions - using her 'glamour'-based fame to sell books to young girls. "A person suitable to work with or be associated with children"? I would have thought not. But her reputation "seriously diminished"? Not in the slightest.

Similarly, Madonna enjoyed hitching lifts in the nuddy in her book for grown-ups, Sex (1992), and now writes for posh children who have no friends. Geri Halliwell and Kylie - you know what I mean. So if I am Kerry Katona (which I'm not) and my drink 'n' drugs past had led me to the perfect place from which to launch myself as the new Beatrix Potter, I should not have a problem persuading some publishing house to give me half a mill. But if I, some not-very-famous person, am revealed as having a drink 'n' drugs past I might have to terminate my contract. Mm.

I think to remedy the fact that they have missed the point so entirely, they should substitute the clause with the proceeding: "If you act or behave in a way which damages your reputation as a person suitable to work with or be associated with children, and consequently the market for or value of the work is seriously increased, we may (at our option) take any of the following actions: Rush publication / Up the advance / Ring Richard and Judy immediately."

If some writer has in the past vomited over an eight-year-old at a birthday party, or worked in a pub for a few years, the contract is a disaster. What constitutes "suitable" is, of course, a broad church.

I remember the furore that one tabloid newspaper tried to create about John Cooper Clarke's involvement in the Sugar Puffs telly advert. It was at least decade after the ads, and the outrage that an ex-heroin addict poet had appealed to the under-tens to eat a breakfast cereal was not forthcoming. Few (if any) would have deemed it to be relevant.

But to imply that someone's private life may alter a contract at the behest of the publisher is astounding. Daniel Handler, aka drillion-selling Lemony Snicket, used to play in rock group The Magnetic Fields with a gay man! Shmurghle! And would this somehow extend to the literature itself? Would Lewis Carroll's psychedelic narrative be deemed to be rather too 'imaginative'? And then there's Melvin Burgess and his uber-realistic teen troubles...

Publishers often flirt with the idea that sanitisation equals success, presumably copying an American business model, and this is utterly, utterly wrong. Writers are not, and should never be, seen as role models. It stifles the process - even if you are writing about ponies. If any publisher thinks of aping this idea, then the world has indeed gone to pot. I can't imagine anyone will. I, for one, am off down the pub. But don't tell anyone.